this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It happens to you, to me and to every UNIX user since the 70s. Your system is (or should be) full of docs and tools to get help. One thing that I noted over the years, when we have new people at work, is that they don't known how to get help from programs or they don't known how to get help from their systems and when they struggle with anything, doesn't matter how basic, they go to the web for help. I always show them this:
aproposmanhelpWhat was that command to compress files?
apropos compressOh! it was gzipWhat was that command to do whatever with the GRUB?
apropos grubOh yeah! update-grubWhat about that command to download files?
apropos downloadOh! it's wgetThe next tip should be learn how to use and navigate in the
manpages, man have it's own man page;man manThere are different sections, section 1 is the default, you don't need to specify, so you can just;
man bashBut if you want to get help from configuration files you should type;
man 5 sysctl.confAlso, almost every program have a built in help compiled with the program code, you usually call it with --help or -h, sometimes just help and other times just call the program without parameters and it should print it.
Other people already suggest the cheat sheets, very useful especially for programas like vim or emacs, some of them come like a template to create a cube, so you print it and then craft it (like an origami) and you can have it in your physical desktop.
Last thing; be patience, your are in the rigth path, there's always more than one way to do things, you just need to find your own way.
I made a comment about how easy it was to learn VMS was (an 80s/90s OS). How do I print a file? I'll try PRINT. Okay, that works. How do I make 6 copies? PRINT /COPIES=6. Great! But how do I print to a file? I'll try PRINT /OUTPUT=filename. Well whaddya know!
I loved that OS like a brother. Sadly it eventually went the way of every proprietary system.
Not a boring story at all, in fact it's Awesome! It's been so long since I touched VMS I would probably be lost now, but I wrote tons of apps and was a sysadmin for a couple years - which I really enjoyed, as 90% of that job was running backups and installing updates, leaving plenty of time to just play around. I missed writing apps, so I made a visual status monitor that let me look at running processes and pause, restart or kill them. My last exposure to VMS was when I worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 2007 or 8 - a group there still had a VaxCluster running, but I never worked on it. Today there is still OpenVMS, mostly run on emulators by retro computing hobbyists I think.
Thank you!